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An exception to the rules of biology As soon as you’ve defined something like Eukaryotes, some exception crops up, and you have to redefine a classification of life. Today, we look at one or two such exceptions, including an animal that doesn’t use oxygen. Here are links to the episodes referenced in today’s “exciting” episode. …
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de facto fitness functions and unexpected early evolution When people talk about their artificial life computer simulations, they often say that there is no fitness function—no bit of code that decides which bit of software lives, dies, or reproduces. Even if it isn’t happening on purpose, the design of the overall system can still cause …
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Figures0.2 While researching for these episodes, I’ve also been researching for other reasons, including the experiment which I talk about today. It’s my attempt to use artificial life for artificial intelligence. Here’s a link to episode 103, which describes Tiera, and gives a good overview of digital organisms and artificial life. Tierra, bits bytes and …
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What a blind man sees in his dreams @seeingwithsound asked me if my lucid dreams are visual, and if so, how vivid or realistic are the experiences. The answer is somewhat interesting, so I went ahead and made an episode out of it. Here’s a link to the website of the vOICe—a sensory substitution device. …
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Wake induced lucid dreams This is the last episode on lucid dreaming and out of body experiences. Today we talk about wake induced lucid dreams, abbreviated “WILD.” The goal is to move directly from a waking state, into a lucid dream—a dream during which you realize that you are dreaming. I’m not as familiar with …
I’d planned to post this on the 13th, just because that date would have been appropriate, but after implementing death, I was tired and a little bit sad. Combine that emotional response with this obviously guilt inspired dream, and the evidence suggests that I’m a gentler soul than I thought. It does niggle at me—the …
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The Zen trick When I was still a child, I stumbled on a method for inducing an out of body experience that I later started calling “the Zen trick.” It has been the most consistently successful method I’ve used. Today, I tell the story of how I came across it, and explain how it works.
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Embracing the fear There are several competing theories on how and why sleep paralysis occurs. One of them is that while most of your brain is still electrically and chemically asleep, the circuits involved in hyper arousal—active during states of excitement, anger or fear—switch on. That brings you more or less fully awake, but without …
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One of my methods After some time working with the rope technique, I got sick of it, and came up with a method of my own. There is no such thing as a perfect method that works every time you use it, but I had much better luck getting out of body with the method …
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The rope technique Today, we finally start to explain some induction techniques—things you can do with your mind, in order to cause your mind to seemingly step out of your body. We’ll start with a method called the rope technique. You use an imaginary pair of hands, to climb an imaginary rope.